POVERTY AND THE FOUNDATION OF ECONOMICS
Published by David Coplin at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 David Coplin
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
I.
FOUNDATIONS
I-1
- Introduction
I-2
– Summary
I-3
- Approach
I-4
- The True Nature of Economics
I-5
- The Foundation of Economics
I-6
- The Effects of Economic Systems
I-7
- The Myth of Scarcity
I-8
- Proper Focus On Goods And Services
I-9
- Beginning To Understand Money
I-10
- Thoughts about Friedman and Other Things
I-11
- Here Is How Economic Systems Work
I-12
- Monetary Policy and The Western Credit System
I-13
- Foundation Recap and Current Problems
II
- THE ALTERNATIVE
II-1
- Service Sector Basics
II-2
- Business and Service Sector Recap
II-3
- Investment Funding Of Any Plan
II-4
- Enterprise Plans
II-5
- Enterprise Plan Ranking
II-6
- Enterprise Plan Tracking and Evaluation
II-7
- Enterprise Plan Partials (Improvements)
II-8
- Alternative Effects and Eliminating Taxation
II-9
- Service Sector Measurements
II-10
- Government Policy and Military Deployment
II-11
- Market Mechanisms That Determine Income Levels
II-12
- The Training/Education Piece
II-13
- Religion and Retirement
II-14
– Can Bits And Pieces Be Implemented?
I believe this book is an effort in futility but I am forced to write it because I have been so wrong so many times about so many things that I am unable to depend on the judgments of my mind. I am forced to look deeper and wonder if perhaps I am wrong yet again; and that the solution to poverty will, indeed, be implemented by society. I just watched a short segment on Denmark where the difference between the richest and the poorest is not that great (at least not that great by the ridiculous standard we set in the USA), where they actually pay people who are getting certain types of education, make affordable child care available to everyone as well as affordable adequate medical care. So I guess it is possible for small groups of people around the globe to make a serious dent in poverty. Perhaps I'm jaded because I was raised in the USA where we embrace and encourage poverty in so many ways.
I'm indebted to my best friend, Thomas Schmitt, whose comments as proofreader, editor, and overall cynic have resulted in significant changes to this alternative :-) The reader will find numerous comments by Thomas in unidentified quote marks throughout this work and my responses to them immediately following.
Poverty will not be eliminated by giving or sharing existing resources (Denmark being the exception that proves the rule :-) as all such efforts in the past have attempted and all current efforts attempt to do. Poverty could be eliminated in this way but it is not possible for most of us to do this because of our inherent nature.
Poverty can be eliminated by
1) Giving up the "western credit system" as the primary mechanism of economic growth and adopting a revised/alternative monetary policy (it will seem radical at first) that supports an "enterprise plan market" and a "service sector" as described later
2) Replacing investment credit with an "enterprise plan market" that is focused on resource allocation instead of on money supply games and allowing this "enterprise plan market" to drive a business sector based on profit and a service sector based on need/use instead of on profit or income level
3) Restructuring our educational system as part of the service sector by paying individuals who are obtaining skills starting as soon as first grade
4) Eliminating taxation and copyright protection
In order to implement 1) thru 4) above, a majority of the population will have to vote to adopt the revised/alternative monetary policy, revoke all copyright laws, and eliminate taxation by electing representatives who will support the legislation required for that implementation or by passing constitutional amendments that will accomplish the same thing. I'm not holding my breath :-)
The remainder of this book explains how these things will work/function but before these explanations will make any sense the reader must understand the true nature of money. And since that is probably going to be difficult I've decided to start from ground zero with some very basic economic propositions that are going to sound crazy at first. But not to worry, things will get crazier; at least that is the way these ideas sounded to me when they first entered my mind.
The alternative I'm presenting here does not require that anybody take care of anybody. This alternative is based on the proposition that most people are capable of providing for themselves if they are given the opportunity to do so. The only people who are not capable of doing so are recovering from recent surgery, completely deranged, or have made the decision to refuse "normal" work for whatever reason. While the number of such people in the world is not zero, it in no way encompasses nor even remotely approaches the current population of poor in the world. And as a side note, I do not include in this group those who have found ways to live by their wits instead of "normal" work.
The title of this book sets up the approach I intend to take, POVERTY AND THE FOUNDATION OF ECONOMICS. All the definitions of poverty of which I'm aware require and are based on objective material measurements, as good science requires. However, I'm taking a different tack. I do not believe poverty has a quantitative definition in the sense of a scale from wealthy to poor. That type of definition does have relevance but not as a "measure" of poverty; it's relevance is what it reveals about the way we, you and I and everyone else, think.
In our distorted view of reality wealthy people are winners and poor people are losers and the winners and losers we define by income level. For the purpose of this book poverty is not defined by income level or any other quantitative measure; it is simply defined as the denial of the legitimate opportunity to contribute whatever you have to contribute to your economic system and, therefore, the denial of an equitable share of that system's goods and services. Just because an individual's income is below a certain level does not make them poor if they have a legitimate opportunity to make their contribution to their economic system and share in that system's goods and services but choose not to exercise that opportunity. An individual is poor only when they are denied the opportunity to participate equitably in their economic system. This denial is never the fault of the individual; it is and always has been the fault of the economic system itself. We all choose (and therefore create) the economic system that we support and, therefore, we all create the poverty that it generates.
Poverty, like everything else in economics, is something that we create. And I am not the only person to have made this observation. I was watching yet another remake of "A Christmas Carol" and noticed the two Children of Man at the feet of the Ghost of Christmas Present, Ignorance and Want. As far as I am concerned this is an artful way of saying that we create poverty. However, Dickens' answer to the problem of Want (i.e. poverty) is the traditional one of encouraging the haves to share with the have-nots; something I believe any rational person will have to conclude has never worked to successfully address the problem and probably never will. And this pushes me back to the foundation of economics.
I-4 - The True Nature of Economics
A clear understanding (foundation) of the true nature of economics is required here. And this pushes me back to the hierarchy of science. Economics is correctly classified in this hierarchy as a "soft" science which means it does not have the same type of "foundation" as the "hard" sciences. The hair-brained ideas that come up in any science can, in the "hard" sciences, be measured against the shared objective reality we call the real world. And this fact alone allows those hair brained ideas to be identified for what they are, baloney.
In the "soft" sciences that standard of measurement is human behavior, behavior that has been and is the stuff of fiction, non-fiction, history, anthropology...you get the idea. There is no real shared objective reality against which we can establish a standard of measurement in the "soft" sciences. Hair brained ideas (perhaps like ones you will find in this book :-) can continue to be proposed as truth until the cows come home (which is to say forever) because there is no sure way to prove or disprove any of them beyond the age-old method of "do you believe this or not" and then adding up those in favor and those against.
And while this makes progress in the "soft" sciences nearly impossible (I say nearly because scientist working in this arena have come up with some truly inspired ways of getting at what is really in our hearts and minds), it does allow people like myself (namely any yahoo off the street) to propose economic ideas with the same validity as "real" economists. This is the reason artists and writers have been and continue to be legitimate sources of insight into human behavior even though they are neither "real" nor even qualified scientists of human behavior.
Human behavior is a quagmire of chaos and confusion the likes of which has no rival. We strive for truth on the one hand and lie our (add an appropriate expletive here) off with the other. We give of our hard earned resources to help care for humanity with one hand and unleash havoc and destruction on our "enemies" with the other. We are the best definition of good and evil of which I'm aware. And to anyone who really endeavors to make sense of human behavior I say right-on brother or sister. You are in good company, the company of artists of every ilk, all of whom have, in their own way, shown us who we are. And you are in the company of serial killers and torturers.
Out of this chaos and confusion economics focuses its attention on a seemingly small, miniscule really, aspect of human behavior, buying and selling, something we do everyday almost without thinking about it. But as I will show, nothing about human behavior is small or miniscule. In fact, I believe that whatever or wherever we start, when it comes to human behavior we will always find ourselves coming back to basic principles that we hold to be true; and by “we” I mean anyone who makes statements about human behavior. Something we all do, right? Take poverty, for example. To say that some measure of material resource defines what poverty is belies what we all know to be true, the impact of poverty on hearts and minds (on our sense of well-being), not to mention the social problems that we all associate with poverty, or the fact that some people are perfectly happy living below the poverty "line". Whatever we say about poverty will always flow from what we believe to be the true definition of poverty; which is why I have stated my definition up front, allowing the reader to take issue with it immediately if that be their wish.
And I also need to get out on the table some things about myself that might explain where some of my ideas originate. I have a deep seated mistrust of people in general, so deep that I'm not really sure where it begins or where it ends. And I probably have some serious self-esteem issues or perhaps the mental disability of a serial killer because I find it hard to believe that my parents actually missed me when I dropped out of sight years ago; a situation my wife took immediate steps to correct when we were first together. She just says I'm crazy :-) Now I'm not saying that will explain some of the more obnoxious views presented here, but in the hands of a skilled practitioner such information could be used to discredit some or all of my conclusions so I think it needs to be out there on the table. We are after all discussing a field of activity that primarily takes place between our ears; so any and all attitudes and points of view are germane here.
I-5 - The Foundation of Economics
So what does all this have to do with the foundation of economics? While traditional economics has focused on the results of the buying and selling behavior, the number of single family homes, the number of cars, the number of airplanes, the quantity (or quality) of services provided, the factors effecting price, etc, etc, etc, I chose to ask the question, "what animates the transaction (buying and selling) itself"? Is there a primary motivation involved in that transaction or are there several motivations, all of which are roughly equal in importance?
For me, the answer to this question, these questions, is the foundation of economics; not the results of the buying and selling transactions as traditional economics holds but the human motivations involved in all such transactions which I believe in conjunction with the economic system we choose pre-determines the result. For me there is only one primary motivation involved and it applies equally to buyer and seller; understanding that motivation begins with the tried and true TO GET THE BEST DEAL FOR ONESELF. If you are a buyer that means getting the product or service for free if possible. If you are a seller that means getting everything the buyer owns if possible. In fact, if you are a seller, you don't care whether the buyer owns it or not as long as it is negotiable and won't be taken back at some later point. And I claim that this "best deal" idea applies to all such transactions in the past, as well as, I suspect, all such transactions in the future.
While this may seem obvious to the most casual observer of human behavior, its implications are far reaching and impact nearly every form of human behavior because there are very few transactions of any type that occur between human beings that can not be viewed as buying and selling. And this is just another in a long list of ways that we can view human behavior; which is why I say no matter where we start, when it comes to human behavior, we always come back to what we consider to be basic principles.
Now if this seems like a remake of Adam Smith's individual pursuit of self-interest that can possibly result in a benefit to the society as a whole, you would be right except for the fact that I don't stop here. This is not yet the primary economic motivation but it's moving in the right direction.
What type of individuals are we who enter into these buying and selling transactions? Is our drive to get the best deal for ourselves conditioned by anything more primary? To answer these last two questions I must draw on two separate religious traditions, Native American and Christian. Seven Arrows teaches that there is only one thing that we share in common (that is, in exactly the same way), and that is our aloneness. And the Bible teaches us that we are all evil. At least that is my interpretation of Jesus' comment in Mt 7:11. I don't think Jesus is berating us with his comment; I think he is just making a simple accurate observation.
Based on these two statements about human behavior I draw the following conclusions about the setting, the environment, in which all buying and selling transactions take place. All such transactions are executed by individuals acting alone no matter what they say, no matter what they believe, no matter with whom they are, no matter for whom they believe they are acting, no matter for whom others may want them to act, no matter how many individuals may be involved in the transaction. We are all acting alone as evil human beings. Now this is not a comforting statement about human behavior but it is, indeed, getting closer to the foundation of my theory of economics. And it is going to be used to explain more than a few things.
And if you are a person of faith you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you are never alone. But for most people saying that only God stands with you in the gap, is exactly the same as saying you are alone. I'm reminded of Mother Teresa's Do It Anyway poem "in the final analysis it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway". Our aloneness refers directly to our relationship with the Almighty; at least I believe that is one of the many things Seven Arrows is teaching us.
Of course the use of evil here must be more clearly defined. What does it mean to be an evil human being? For the purposes of economics, in fact for any purpose really, my definition of evil individuals does not require Satan or serial killers or hypocrites or spitefulness or torturers, no blood and gore, although as we all know those aspects of human behavior are, unfortunately, part of the whole picture. It requires only one thing, denial (perhaps ignorance) of the truth that we are all, as the Declaration of Independence (and Seven Arrows) states, equal.
And yes, I know a strict interpretation of that Declaration can easily argue that it applies only to men, not to women. But while I know of no credible defense against that male chauvinist interpretation since I am sure that was indeed the intent in the hearts of the authors of that document (just one of the many things that convince me our founding fathers were just as evil as everyone else) I choose to accept the more inspiring interpretation that "men" should be understood in its more universal sense of all people since that brings the Declaration closer to the truth (ok, the truth as I see it :-).
"In this email you said equal worth" Actually you (Tom) said it first and I latched onto it because it more correctly expressed what I was trying to say. Physically we are all different and emotionally the only thing we share equally, as far as I can tell, is our aloneness although any physical measure of that aloneness would again show a spectrum of difference. So once again we're back between the ears; which is where all human institutions including economics exist.
"It says nothing about men being created with equal abilities or anything else...Only (equal) rights" While I acknowledge the validity of your interpretation of those inspired words, I do not myself accept that interpretation. While it is definitely valid to require that those two phrases (created equal...equal rights) be interpreted together, it is equally valid to interpret them as Lincoln has done and as I do as two separate and distinct statements. Just because we are created equal does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that we all share the same rights. I think both of those phrases are required to clearly justify the separation Jefferson is addressing. In Jefferson's day people were not considered created equal nor were they considered endowed with equal rights. This was the time of an aristocracy who considered themselves not only better than the rest of society but deserving of that special status by divine right starting with the king.
And as much as it pains me to think that most of us believe we are not all equal in some fundamental sense, I'm sure God has something in mind here (Seven Arrows teaches that this is part of our lesson in limitation and substance). We are in the company of our founding fathers who immediately upon penning and signing that historic set of documents managed to duck and dodge the clear implication of those words and "interpret" them for over a hundred years to exclude those who had been forced into making fortunes for the southern wealthy and whose lands were being seized by force. But if the extent of the reader's criticism so far is the rejection of one of my central propositions, our evil nature; then all I can say is that when push comes to shove I guess there is no real way to conclusively dismiss anyone's assertions about human nature no matter how wacky they may seem to us except to say that we don't agree. But don't worry, not everything in here is in this vein. There are going to be statements later on that can be conclusively evaluated by our minds in this world and of which the reader's evaluation will be greatly appreciated :-) And there has already been one such statement - that taxation can be eliminated.
I believe strongly in the basic sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence and in the protections our Constitution and Bill of Rights attempt to equitably implement into actual rights. Except for the obviously male chauvinist point of view there are no other statements in the Declaration that imply those rights are to be granted only to certain people. Unfortunately, there are statements in the Constitution that imply we have attempted to deny those rights to many people. And the obvious bias that our legal system shows to the wealthy is a clear indication that we continue to deny equal rights to large segments of our population. Such is our human evil nature I believe. And it is with this unjust nature that we have waged and are currently waging that continuing battle for truth, justice, and freedom. As Walt Kelly said so many years ago in his Pogo comic strip, ‘We have met the enemy and he is us’. We are the strongest nation in the world today. We are the strongest nation that has ever been. But our real enemy has never been beyond our borders. Our real enemy is our own refusal to stick with the basic sentiments embodied in our Declaration of Independence.
Now I know full well that we all take the Declaration of Independence with a grain of salt because it is obvious to the most casual observer that we are not all equal. We are unequal in every aspect of human behavior that you can name, save one, our aloneness. And because we are evil beings we continually deny the truth of that equality, the truth of our equal worth; insisting instead on focusing our attention on this physical achievement or that mental attribute or those seriously extreme gadgets or any of a million different measures of wealth, fame, infamy, charity, piety, character, intellect, achievement, etc, etc. But the words of the Declaration still stand. ‘All created equal (all deserving)...life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’. But for me the truth of our equality will not, anymore, give way to the obvious inequality with which we surround ourselves. That truth starts from the gift of Seven Arrows and our equality in aloneness. And it continues with the foundation of economics, the foundational motivation that we all share, not in equal amounts necessarily, but that we all share. This motivation conditions all of our behavior in one way or another. It is yet another, in a list that will grow long if we let it, way in which we are all equal (not equal in amount but equal in effect, the effect of poverty) and, unfortunately, all evil. THE DESIRE TO BE BETTER THAN OTHERS is the primary motivation in economics (probably in all aspects of human behavior, but that is beyond the scope of this book). It defines both the environment in which all buying and selling transactions take place as well as conditions the results of those transactions. It springs from our aloneness and percolates through our evil nature to accomplish the first word in the title of this book POVERTY.
The foundation of economics is the primary motivation that drives all buying and selling transactions, THE DESIRE TO BE BETTER THAN OTHERS, not the quantitative results of those transactions. This is not to say that quantitative results are not important. They are very important because they clearly reveal the result, the effect of our primary motivation. And that result is and always has been poverty. And it clearly implies that we will never be willing to eliminate poverty.
However, we may be willing to embrace the alternative economic system proposed herein; not because it will eliminate poverty but because we may find within it something that we do want; and want enough to be willing to put up with the results of this alternative economic system. This alternative economic system will result in a number of changes in our economic lives if we actually give it a try and one of those results will be the elimination of poverty not because that is our intention but because that is just the way the system will function.
I-6 - The Effects of Economic Systems
Poverty, like everything else in economics, is something that we create. We may not want to think that is so, but it is. The poverty that is and has been part of our lives since before recorded history is a direct result of our primary motivation, the desire to be better than others, as it functions within the economic system that we choose. So too, economic systems, that aggregate of buying and selling, are something we create like a work of fiction or a biography or a symphony. But unlike those things it is not something that is done by an individual or a small group; that is, compared to the population of the earth. Economic systems, and therefore economics, are something that we all create together. We may not realize that we are doing it with others because our buying and selling transactions seem to be rather solitary in nature but they are, in fact, not solitary. They are like votes cast at the ballot box. They are cast in solitude but give their effect in concert. The results of buying and selling transactions translate directly into income levels which can be described and distribute themselves as a Lorenz curve, a curve that is defined on the underside of a diagonal that one draws on an x/y graph where the x (vertical) axis lists the total income in your system as a % from 0 to 100 in equal increments and the y (horizontal) axis lists your population as a % of households from 0 to 100 in ascending sequence of income level, the lowest income level starting at 0 and the highest income level at 100. The resulting curve measures the inequality of your economic system and provides answers to income distribution questions like 60% of households control 40% of total income or 80% of households control 50% of total income. If the curve lays flat against the diagonal your system equally distributes its income. As inequality increases the curve's peak moves away from the diagonal on the underside of this line of equality. As inequality decreases the curve's peak moves closer to the diagonal. Our current peak is in the vicinity of 80/50 I think. The economic system that we have currently embraced shows its face in the results of that distribution. The poverty that we create is part of that face. These Lorenz curve results will occur for a variety of reasons: skill, random chance (what we call luck :-), history, etc, etc, but mostly from intent, the conscious and rationalized desire to be better than others meeting the vicissitudes of life. It means that poverty is a guaranteed result of our buying and selling transactions unless we do something to alter those results. So far we, as a people on this earth (at least the majority of us...tribal hunter-gather societies seem to be an exception), have done almost nothing to directly address this guaranteed result of poverty; in fact, we have institutionalized it in many different ways: racially, religiously, politically, monetarily...one might even say creatively evil ways. The players are constantly shuffling themselves trying to improve their position relative to the other players but the overall shape of the distribution doesn't really change much unless you are going through a recession or depression in which case the curve's peak moves even further away from the diagonal.
I personally believe that the many prescriptions in the Bible to care for the poor are there because God knows our evil hearts all too well. In fact, I believe that is why God instituted the year of Jubilee among the Hebrew people early in their history. The only people in modern times of which I'm aware that practiced the year of Jubilee concept were the Watusi in southern Africa and some of the Native American tribes who called it the Give-Away. For me this is just another in a list of ways in which tribal hunter-gatherer cultures had already reached an exceedingly high level of civilization before western technology began its wholesale slaughter of those cultures.
Were we to plot wealth values of each member of the population from least to most on the y axis and the population numbers associated with those wealth values in ascending order on the x axis we would have a graph whose shape would correspond to a Lorenz curve that has been rotated counter-clockwise 135 degrees. The peak would be left of the center income value. Total population in the system would be represented by the sum of all the point values on this graph. Total wealth in the system would be represented by the area under those point values. At any given level of total wealth there is a point on the bottom scale that represents the "contribution" value; that is, the value at which you are actually making enough to allow yourself to start enjoying the fruits of your economic system such as vacations, entertainment events, luxury items, etc on a regular basis because you are receiving more for your "contribution" to the economy than you need for those expenses that most of us consider normal. As the population increases if the total wealth does not also increase proportionately that "contribution" value starts to move to the right. Conversely, if the total wealth increases proportionately faster than the population that "contribution" value starts to move to the left.
This is a rather complicated way of saying that if your economy is growing fast enough the number of people contributing to it continues to increase and, conversely, as your economy slows or shrinks (sours) the number of people contributing to it continues to decrease and wealth becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. At the height of the Great Depression the "contribution" line was probably close to the right end of the curve (I think I read somewhere that 2% of the population held over 80% of the total wealth). Currently I would guess it is somewhere to the left but not far from the center income value which leaves the bulk of the population unable to enjoy the fruits of our economic system on a regular basis. And if we don't take steps to change it, that "contribution" line is going to continue to slosh back and forth...forever and continue to exclude large portions of our population.
"How...(do we)...redistribute the wealth under the...curve" This is a great question but in point of fact the alternative being proposed here does not work by redistributing anything. It works by giving everyone as nearly an equal shot at the resources of the economy as possible. Nor do I expect that Lorenz looking curve shape to change much with the alternative being proposed here. What I do expect is that some portion of the left side of that curve will disappear if we actually implement the alternative being proposed here, as though it were lopped off and that the peak will move down and to the right perhaps as far as the center income value. Instead of starting at or near zero, I expect the curve to begin at that particular income level that is the minimum income level. From that point on it will probably retain its current general shape. And I am still waiting for something or someone to punch some holes in the alternative being proposed here. Perhaps you can demonstrate that the Lorenz looking curve itself is being misapplied here :-)
In college I read the Malthusians and bought their arguments about scarce resources which seemed eminently reasonable and rooted in accurate estimates of actual resources. This was in the 1960s when world population was around 2 billion and it was inconceivable that world population could increase by even 20% without a catastrophe. Today we are 6 billion and growing. As I survey the world's resources I do not see disaster that was "sure" to happen as a result of the lack of resources. What I see is an inequitable distribution of food, shelter, clothing, education, and health care and a system of economic transactions that guarantee the continuing inequitable distribution of those same things. And by this statement I do NOT mean in any way shape or form that the solution to poverty is a forced or legislated redistribution of existing resources. Taking existing resources from those that "have" and giving them to those that "have-not" just won't work.
Trying to convince or force people to give up what they believe they have earned is never going to eliminate poverty (tribal hunter-gatherer societies being an exception). It never has in non-tribal non-hunter-gatherer societies; it never will. All of us (again, Denmark seems to be an exception here :-) are far too evil to ever allow that type of solution. And as far as I am concerned it is wrong in principle because it is based on a misunderstanding of how the goods and services that would be the object of any redistribution are created.
The fact that every past and current "solution" to poverty has always been some variation of the redistribution of existing resources clearly indicates to me that we have never really wanted to eliminate poverty. Our evil nature prefers to keep poverty around because it allows so many of us to feel that we are better than those of us who are poor, to feel good about ourselves when we "help" the poor, and to avoid responsibility for that poverty by believing the lie that responsibility for poverty resides with only the poor themselves or with a lack of resources.
The only societies of which I'm aware that have been able to deal with poverty by redistribution are tribal hunter-gatherer societies which managed over time to include in their cultural practice certain values that rewarded that physical redistribution with emotional/spiritual growth. At this point in time "modern" civilization can only dream about such cultural achievement. I think tribal hunter-gather cultures actually achieved that healing, not in their dealings with other tribes (except in one case of which I'm aware) but in the internal structures of their tribal life. Maybe the fact that nature dominates the lives of tribal hunter-gather cultures has something to do with that; where as our "modern" cultures have turned that equation upside down and are still struggling to find their balance.
So a lack of resources simply does not explain anything to me in any satisfactory way. Something else is going on. And when I started reading comments in the world aid fund raising literature that you could take a map of the famine areas and overlay it with a map of civil unrest or war zones and get a very close match, things started to make sense. And this is another reason the premise of our evil nature is so central in this book. The real problem is that we make resources scarce, or if you prefer, that we believe resources are scarce. While I believe that our view of scarce resources is, like so many other things, rooted in our evil nature which has been at work in us since before recorded history, there is the possibility that it is actually rooted in ignorance. And this is why I'm forced to write this book.
Inequity is, of course, a value judgment on my part. If you are enjoying the fruits of your economic system without much care for anything then you probably think that system is working perfectly. I, of course, see inequity flowing directly out of our evil nature and our primary desire to be better than others; that is, flowing directly out of the foundation of economics. While it may seem odd or even ridiculous to make an attitude, a human motivation, a desire, something so insubstantial, the foundation of a particular science, the fact that we are talking about one of the sciences whose foundation is constructed on human behavior should help you understand. The results of human behavior, the happiness, the joy, the pain, the suffering, the ecstasy, and the unspeakable horror all originate in our motivations which translate into our actions which produce our results; not unlike the origin of all goods and services, which derive from our imaginations. The fact that things so substantial are the direct result of things so insubstantial is just another paradox of that thing we call life, that gift of the Almighty. As Seven Arrows has tried to teach us everything is a medicine wheel. So in some fundamental way all that is substantial is the same as all that is insubstantial.
"Not a problem of resources. Yes and no" What I hear you saying is that yes it basically is a problem of resources. The situation you described at work sounds like classic outsourcing as the inevitable grinding of the (add your preferred expletive here) western credit system works it's (add your preferred expletive here) magic not the reflection of a lack of resources. The wealthy are always going to push as many people down on the economic ladder as they possibly can because they correctly believe that it enhances their position. I say correctly because it is only a relative thing. While they are pushing others down the ladder they are simultaneously pushing the whole ladder down as well because they are shrinking the very markets that make them wealthy. But they ARE maintaining their relative position on the top of the economic heap. The simple fact is that they have no choice. If they don't someone else who is wealthy will. And this will eventually erode their position on the ladder. They know how to maintain their relative position but nothing else of any real value. If I'm reading that wrong, enlighten me.
"Many people aren't having children these days" Are you referring to those statistics that compared industrialized economies to agriculturally based economies; and found that population rates were much lower in the industrialized economies? When they tracked nations that were industrializing they found that population rates started declining; which gave rise to the idea that industrialization was an automatic birth control mechanism. As far as I know that is still the case. When people no longer need many children to support their life style and, in fact, need fewer children in order to support their life style population rates decline significantly.
"It just seems to me that a lot of people aren't having kids because they're physically unable to or too damaged emotionally" As intriguing as alternative interpretations may be I'm sticking with the industrialization theory. It just makes too much sense as the shift from agriculturally based to industrially based economies reduces the relative benefit of having many children and increases the relative penalty (the cost) of having many children.
I-8 - Proper Focus On Goods And Services
One of the most important contributions that traditional economics has made is their focus on the goods and services produced by economic systems instead of the monetary equivalents of those goods and services because no matter what those monetary equivalents may be the goods and services themselves are all that really count. The only way to properly compare economic systems is to compare the goods and services they produce given the "raw" resources with which they are provided. And there are only two basic "raw" resources: materials from the universe (multi-verse if you prefer, or recycled there-from) and the imagination of human beings. All goods and services produced by any economic system originate in the imagination of human beings.
The better use your economic system makes of the imaginations of the human beings that make up that economic system the more goods and services that economic system will produce; that is, assuming the imaginations of those individuals are focused on the production of goods and services. As we all know the focus of individual imagination is wide ranging and if the culture within which that individual grows places a low relative value on goods and services compared to something else one should not expect large quantities of goods and services but large quantities of...something else :-)
This leads me into my first story. My first wife and I were driving back to Wisconsin through northern Nebraska near the Pine Ridge Reservation and we picked up a hitch-hiker. This young man was a Lakota half-breed with whom I had an interesting conversation that included a dream he had had about big Native Americans and little non-Native Americans. In his dream the Native Americans were all "adult" size and the non-Native Americans were all "child" size. I believe his dream accurately reflected the contrast between the results of tribal hunter-gatherer societies and modern western societies on the individuals within those two different cultures.
Tribal hunter-gatherer cultures placed/place a very high value on "spiritual" growth and achieving "balance" in one’s life. Modern western culture places its highest value on achieving material success. The result is that tribal hunter-gatherer cultures produce "adults" and modern western cultures produce primarily "children" who never reach real maturity.
And this brings me back to the futility of what I am doing. I am sick and tired of listening to people say give this or give that and much will be accomplished. While something may indeed be accomplished (we will be able to pat ourselves on the back and believe that we are actually not the evil beings that we are), one thing I know for sure; IT WON'T ELIMINATE POVERTY. People have been giving this or that for longer than recorded history, some of them huge amounts but poverty has always been with us. And only a fool will believe that yet another giving program will address the issue of poverty.
If you look at tribal hunter-gatherer societies of the past and present you will find that the difference between the richest and the poorest in their societies was and is far smaller (miniscule really) compared to that difference in modern western cultures. This is another in that list of things that indicate to me the exceedingly high level of civilization that was and is achieved by tribal hunter-gatherer societies. And these societies did it with very specific cultural traditions like their nomadic life-style or other practices that emphasized the importance of other things than the accumulation of material goods, traditions that actually worked to mitigate, actually directly addressed our evil nature and desire to be better than others. At least that is my conclusion.
Such was not the case with societies that were not tribal and hunter-gatherer based, although I read somewhere that the early communist societies including the former Soviet Union and China managed to achieve a 3 to 1 difference for a short period of time. But these communist societies did this by forced redistribution and the assumption of fundamental altruism in all of us, a tactic doomed to fail from the start as far as I'm concerned because it belies our inherent nature. Jesus said that the poor would always be with us. And I am not about to try and argue that Jesus misspoke. But what I will argue is that I misunderstood Jesus for years.
For longer than I can remember, I thought people were or became poor because they lacked skills, had some other problem that they refused to correct, or were simply the victims of a lack of resources. In short, I thought that people who were poor were doing it to themselves or that there was just not enough to go around and that I had nothing whatever to do with it unless I, too, should decide to refuse to correct some problem or lacked qualification for some scarce resource. So I interpreted what Jesus said to mean that there will always be people who insist on making themselves poor and always be a lack of resources. And since the argument that we create most of our own problems definitely "seems" to have some merit, I left it at that. But I no longer believe that people make themselves poor all by themselves or become poor due to a lack of resources. I believe they require the help of everyone else as well. And because we are all evil beings by nature who desire primarily to be better than others we all gladly (ok I'm exaggerating, we mostly ignore the evil that we do :-) accommodate them. I now interpret Jesus to mean that there will always be poor people not because they are poor by nature nor because there are not enough resources but because we are all, rich and poor alike, evil by nature and more than willing to allow this to happen.
One of the ways that I came to this conclusion was by losing a great job.
For a number of years I had a job that paid me so well I could afford to give a great deal to "charity" (well...a great deal by my standards :-) and still have plenty left over to pay any and all expenses. When I was downsized out of that job, I took a job that paid one-third (1/3) as much. While I could have started doing contract work that would have maintained the salary level I would have had to travel extensively to do so. I had to chose between spending time with my wife and leaving her alone most of time to work and maintain a salary level. I chose my wife and I moved onto another career path. At one-third (1/3) of my former salary level things got bad (hmmm let's say financially challenging :-) quickly; a situation that just continues to get worse.